A place where common sense comes back 'round to bite you in the ass...

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Metering the Site

This is not a topic that is particularly close to my heart. Not a big deal to me. Not something I usually pay attention to.

But lately, other bloggers have been posturing as to the importance of their existence, as well as to mine and theirs and other peoples’. So I thought it might be fun to post my opinion on the matter.

Cupcakes!

Ok, ok…not really. I was kidding when I posted my comment on XO’s post, because if I really got cupcakes for doing what I do out here, do ya think I’d tell you guys about it? Hell no! They’d be mine! ALL MINE!!!

Satyavati said it perfectly in those comments, IMO. If I didn’t blog, my head would explode. Before I blogged, I wrote random “essays,” I guess you might call them, in Word on whatever computer I happened to be on at the time. Then I started reading blogs for fun when the term leaked into my state of conscience back in 2004, and the rest is history.

Admittedly, back in 2006 when our local weekly gave me the award for being the Best Blog About Real Life, I felt pretty damned good. We were out to dinner, and I was feeling a bit low about something or another, and Leo told me the news as we sipped our first margarita. I jumped up and down in my seat! He went to the front door of the restaurant that happened to have a Pitch dispensary, or whatever they are, and we searched through it to find the page I was mentioned on. And there it was! In all it’s glory! It was nice.

But it wasn’t the end-all-be-all for my writing “career” for heaven’s sake.

For the record, because apparently there is some relative interest in this subject right now, here is the tracking I have of page visits and views over the past 12 months:

I haven’t been tracking it for all that long, that I can recall…and it’s something I don’t pay that much attention to, because it doesn’t matter to me. And to be honest, I don’t understand it all that well either. The difference between a visit and a page view, and what counts as a visit or a page view, and what does it all mean when it comes to someone finding me via a link from another blog, or from a google search, and is it good that I had over 5,000 page views in the month of April, etc, etc…BAH! Don’t. Care. (And Sitemeter is what I use to track shit. Not some random, “Your blog is THIS popular!” website…)

I’m not out here to earn money from advertising, or to get famous, or to be discovered in any way. Other than as a break during the day for people who like to read me. If people like reading, and they wanna come back because they like reading, that’s just peachy.

Sometimes, it’s about just getting it out of our head. That’s all. I like it that way…

Don't be bothered by what we have taken on in discussion lately. We are rather confounded by it and because of what you told me we have decided to do some research. Neither Faith nor I have ever thought of making a living off of our blogs.

I know your intentions are good, but I have never wanted to earn money on my blog. Neither has Faith.

I appreciate the congrats, but the encouragement is not really necessary as I will never write about one single topic. It will always be a fucked up mishmosh of my life. Which is a fucked up mishmosh.

I think people came to my site because I was talking about Coldplay or something and they are so popular right now, the traffic increased suddenly.

The problem that I have with all of this is moreover what it stemmed from to begin with...the fact that you were checking out blogs, found Twin's, and then brother called me to tell me he thought it was a bad idea for her to blog about her business. As if it matters for ANY REASON that she vents about work shit there! She's anonymous on it, doesn't mention her business by name at all, so there's nothing to tie her blog to it or it to her blog. So what was the big fucking deal there?

THEN you go and find a way to PROVE that she has traffic. Again, why? WTF does it matter?

I don't see the point in trying to make this all seem like it was something that it wasn't. The whole offering encouragement and congrats for something that we basically do to blow off steam, and nothing else, is just odd, IMO. Call me bitchy or opinionated or just rude, but that's what it is.

The Twin isn't bothered by it. But I am. Just a bit. I'm not going into the reasons why.

Twin, your Sitemeter is open to anyone that wants to view it. If that's ok with you, then cool. I keep mine as a sign-in just for me because I don't need random people having access to IP addresses that belong to my visitors. Otherwise, I'd probly leave it open, too. Just wanted to give you the heads up there.

For the record, Tony's blog has a ranking in the top 250,000 on that Alexa.com site. So it goes to show that if you post pics of half-naked women, and links to common news stories for any given geographic location, you can be almost as popular as HIM someday! Just in case you want to know how to *really* get to the top...